Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Introduction to 'Harnessing the Earthworm'
by Lady Eve Balfour, 1959
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/oliver/balfour_intro.html

    'WHEN the question is asked, "Can I build top-soil?" the answer is
"Yes", and when the first question is followed by a second question, 'How
can I do it?" the answer is "Feed earthworms".'

    That is the last sentence of this book, and it seems to me particularly
appropriate to use it as the first sentence of my introduction, because it
serves equally well as a preface to, or a summary of, what the book is all
about, and this fact symbolizes that in the Wheel of Life, or the Nutrition
Cycle, or by whatever other name you prefer to call it, there is neither
beginning nor end, but only continuity; an unbroken progression of birth,
growth, reproduction, decline, death, decay, rebirth -- a continuous flow
of substances passing from one form of life to another, round and round the
cycle without end.

    Dr. Barrett puts it rather more simply; he says, "Earthworms are soil
builders, everything else -- plant, animal, man and bacteria are food for
earthworms whose function is to mix living matter with mineral particles
and send them forth on their round once again.'

    That is the cycle as established by nature and operated by the
creative, i.e., living, forces. It worked on an ever-ascending spiral,
accumulating yet richer and more varied life forms, until man arrived upon
the scene. It has been left to this supposedly most intelligent of all
creation's species to put the wheel into reverse by abandoning creative
motive power in favour of consumptive power, i.e., the destructive forces.
In so doing man has enacted the role of the parasite whose ravages destroy
the host upon which it is dependent for sustenance. He has been guilty of
this behaviour since the early dawn of 'civilization'. His host is the
fertile topsoil forming the surface covering of the globe; a thin covering
now, very threadbare in places. 'The Wasting Basis of Civilization', so has
Sir John Boyd Orr defined soil fertility. It is man who is responsible for
this wasting. Of the fertile cultivatable area of the U.S.A., as it was
found by the pioneers, one-quarter has gone for ever, so their soil experts
tell us, and many million acres are still disappearing annually. The same
story comes from South Africa. Deserts can be seen there extending for
hundreds of square miles, that were producing good crops only thirty years
ago. Australia and New Zealand have the same sorry record of man's
rapacious exploitation to relate, and even European soil shows signs of the
same decline.

    The phenomenon is not new. In the name of economic necessity, God
forgive him, mankind has destroyed the source of his food since before the
days when part of the Sahara Desert was known as the granary of Rome. The
two new factors are the speed with which modern man can turn fertile land
into desert, and the fact that there no longer exist any new virgin lands
for him to discover and exploit. He has reached the last barrier. At last
he must learn the bitter lesson of his past mistakes or perish from the
face of the earth, like other species, now extinct, who failed to solve the
problem of how to co-operate with their environment.

    That is the major crisis facing the human race to-day. It is a
challenge beside which, as a recent writer put it, the bickerings of
Foreign Ministers sound like the jabbering on Monkey Hill.

    Those of us who believe that the living, creative forces are the only
ones that can promote and sustain life, know that soil fertility can still
be maintained by obeying nature's law of return, and that by this means
vitality in soil, plant, animal and man results, but the time is short, and
mass action is required now if it is not to be too late. The warning has
been cried aloud from the housetops by men of knowledge and the highest
repute. From every continent, almost every country, their warning and call
to action comes -- 'The Human Race faces mass starvation -- Act Now or your
children's children will die.'

    Does anyone pay the slightest attention? Very few. Does anyone ever pay
the slightest attention to prophets of woe? They persecute the prophets
sometimes, but that is about all. The prophets were so frequently right
that I have often marvelled at the persistent deafness of mankind to all
warnings of preventable horrors to come. I have come to the conclusion that
the explanation of this is twofold.

    First, in the case of the powers that be; those in authority are always
so preoccupied by the immediate problems of the moment, that they have
become permanently myopic and are literally incapable of taking any but the
shortest of short-term views.

    At the present time, for example, the need for timber, for fuel and
housing now, is of such apparently prime importance that it seems to
justify the risk that a new desert will result to-morrow. It is a mistaken
view, of course, and it is the attitude of mind that has produced the
dustbowls of the world and landed us in the mess we are in; a mess which
makes it increasingly more difficult to opt for the long-term view. One can
have nothing but sympathy with those who may have to choose between the
death of hundreds now or millions to-morrow. There is always the chance
that if one saves the hundreds now one will not live to see the million
perish. Thus it is -- to take a topical example -- that the present danger
from the atomic bomb appears much greater than that from soil erosion. It
isn't. In point of fact it is a mere flea-bite to it when considered in
terms of the probable survival of the species, but that is the way it
looks, so those in authority perpetually confuse priorities and postpone
action, while the apathy of the rest of the population comes, I think, from
the feeling that nothing they personally can do about it can possibly
affect the situation as a whole, 'so what's the use?'

    I urge anyone who feels that way about it to read this book, and here I
must make a confession. Like other people who have had practical experience
of the results of compost-making and organic cultivation generally, I have
for long been convinced that in the cycle of life the members of the soil
population play a vital part, and that when relying on the return of all
possible organic wastes to the soil as our sole method of fertilizing, we
are not feeding our crops direct, but through the soil population. We have,
in fact, a slogan -- 'Feed the soil population and they will feed your
crop.' Among this vast population I have always recognized the priority
claims of the earthworm as a creator of soil fertility without equal, a
view confirmed and strengthened by the recent research work carried out at
the Connecticut Agricultural Research Station which is reprinted in this
book and of which I was already aware. I am even myself a breeder of
domesticated earthworms in a small way. For all these reasons I did not
expect to find anything particularly startling or new to me personally, in
a book called Harnessing the Earthworm. I was wrong.

    I did not know, for example, that in fertile soil the weight of
bacteria alone amounts to 7,000 lb. per acre. I did not know that anywhere
in cultivated soil, however fertile, the natural earthworm population
reached two million per acre (Nile Valley). I did not know that in any part
of the world, even where intensive propagation of earthworms for soil
building was carried out, there were farms where as many as three million
earthworms per acre have been recorded, and that populations of between one
and two million are quite common. I did not know that one million
earthworms weigh a ton, or that in the course of twenty-four hours each
worm will pass through its body its own weight of soil. Since earthworm
castings are composed largely of colloidal soluble humus, and are far
richer in available plant foods than the surrounding soil, this represents
a staggering annual deposit of natural plant fertilizer, quite apart from
the continual addition of the dead bodies of the worms themselves as they
fulfil their own life cycle.

    The figures given in this book of the differences in crop yields
obtained from soils of equal fertility, with and without added earthworms,
are startling, but not unbelievable once the data given is studied.

    While I doubt whether quite such spectacular results could ever be
obtained in our climate, earthworms can and do exist in a very wide range
of latitudes. Where they can exist they can be increased, and there is no
better or quicker way of increasing them than by intensive propagation of
egg capsules in special breeding boxes. The point being that when
transferred as eggs to their final location in garden, field or orchard,
they will survive, whereas the mature or growing worm may not.

    The technique for this intensive propagation is simple, and Dr. Barrett
gives such clear and concise instructions that anyone -- whether he starts
with purchased stock or native brandlings -- can test the claims made for
it for himself. For the English reader, however, there is one serious
omission. The optimum temperature for maximum production of egg capsules is
given as 70 degrees, and while plenty of advice is given for protecting
culture boxes or master beds from too great heat, nothing whatever is said
about how to protect them from cold. My own experience may therefore be
helpful. Culture in boxes must either be discontinued during the winter, or
take place in cellars or heated greenhouses. Culture in master beds can
continue provided these are sunk in the ground and covered up with straw in
frosty weather. Attention of course must be given to drainage from below,
and prevention of flooding from above.

    I consider it highly important that experiments on the lines suggested
in this book should be carried out without delay. As organic cultivators
are well aware, the principal argument used against them by soil
scientists, is based on mathematics. 'The crop takes out more than the
compost puts back. The result must be a deficiency.' The organic cultivator
replies that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, which he can
demonstrate. Therefore, either mathematics do not apply to living
organisms, or there must be some figures missing from the sum. It seems to
me that this book gives a clue to one at least of the possible missing
figures, and I hope our scientists will give it the study it deserves.
Mankind is at the last frontier. There is no new soil to be had in the
horizontal plane. His hope lies in building new soil vertically. Dr.
Barrett asserts that by harnessing the earthworm in the way he recommends,
the kitchen waste or garbage from a household of two or three members will
furnish enough ideal earthworm food to breed tens of thousands of the soil
builders each year. He himself, by this method, produces all the fruit and
vegetables he and his family can eat, from one acre of land, as well as
growing flowers and lawns. He discovered, in an experiment in his culture
beds, that an acre of soil, if provided with enough organic matter, could
support an astronomical population of earthworms, and quotes the Oregon
State and New York State College of Forestry field studies as indicating
that an earthworm population of from 250,000 to 1,500,000 an acre is enough
to keep the earth as fertile and productive as man can want it.

    In another publication, Dr. Barrett sums the matter up thus: 'The
problem facing civilization to-day is rebuilding the soil and restoring the
earth to a form immediately usable for food production. By the slow process
of nature, it takes 500 to 1,000 years to lay down an inch of topsoil.
Under favourable conditions a task-force of earthworms can do the same job
in five years. An individual working with a lug-box or a compost pile can
start building topsoil for his garden. A farmer working with a manure pile
can do it with his farm. A community utilizing a garbage dump can do it, or
a nation working with its resources can do it.'

    When, in connection with my work for the Soil Association, I have
lectured on world soil erosion and the imperative need to restore, maintain
and if possible increase the vitality of what soil is left, people often
say, 'I realize the situation is appalling, but what can I do?' I feel this
book at last contains a practical answer to that question. 'Feed
earthworms.' This answer may sound flippant. I don't think you will think
so when you have read this book. The technique is easy, and involves much
less work than ordinary compost-making, and in all seriousness I suggest
that if everyone turned his attention to increasing the earthworm
population (and there is no one who cannot do this, for it can be done even
in a flower-pot or window-box) it might be the key to the survival of the
human race, because through utilizing all organic wastes to feed earthworms
and then deliberately putting them to work in the manner here described, it
might be possible not only vastly to increase the fertility and
productivity of the land already under cultivation, but also to arrest the
further advance of deserts and dustbowls. This would give humanity a
breathing space in which to learn how to bring other creative forces into
play, so that water and life and the capacity to sustain vegetation may
ultimately be restored to all the man-made deserts of the earth.

    -- Eve B. Balfour


    From "Harnessing the Earthworm" by Dr. Thomas J. Barrett, Humphries,
1947, with an Introduction by Eve Balfour; Wedgewood Press, Boston, 1959;
Bookworm Pub Co, ISBN 0916302091
    "A practical inquiry into soil building, soil conditions, and plant
nutrition through the action of earthworms, with instruction for the
intensive propagation and use of domesticated earthworms in biological soil
building." Well-researched, well-written, pioneering book on
vermicomposting, very positive outlook, a refreshing read.